Whales and Nations: Environmental Diplomacy on the High Seas (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)
Kurkpatrick Dorsey
Before commercial whaling was outlawed in the 1980s, diplomats, scientists, bureaucrats, environmentalists, and sometimes even whalers themselves had attempted to create an international regulatory framework that would allow for a sustainable whaling industry. In Whales and Nations, Kurkpatrick Dorsey tells the story of the international negotiation, scientific research, and industrial development behind these efforts —and their ultimate failure.
Whales and Nations begins in the early twentieth century, when new technology revived the fading whaling industry and made whale hunting possible on an unprecedented scale. By the 1920s, declining whale populations prompted efforts to develop “rational”—what today would be called sustainable—whaling practices. But even though almost everyone involved with commercial whaling knew that the industry was on an unsustainable path, Dorsey argues, powerful economic, political, and scientific forces made failure nearly inevitable.
Based on a deep engagement with diplomatic history, Whales and Nations provides a unique perspective on the challenges facing international conservation projects. This history has profound implications for today’s pressing questions of global environmental cooperation and sustainability.
Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QsLlM5KTx0
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About Kurkpatrick Dorsey
Reviews for Whales and Nations: Environmental Diplomacy on the High Seas (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)
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"The geographic scale of the cooperation required to ‘save the whales’ can be hard to fathom. Kurkpatrick Dorsey understands it experientially through his exhaustive archival work; his book gives its reader the opportunity to experience it, too. . . . Whales and Nations lays the foundation of international whaling and whale conservation at its proper historical and geographic scale."
Russell Fielding
AAG Review of Books
"This interesting and well researched [book] . . . sheds new light on how the International Whaling Commission developed, and on how it struggled."
Bjorn Basberg
International Journal of Maritime History
"I am delighted that a book like Whales and Nations exists and that Kurkpatrick Dorsey has written it. He offers us a detailed history of the regulation of whaling from the pre–World War I era up to the present. . . . He is certainly one of the best writers of diplomatic history around."
Karen Oslund
Environmental History
"Dorsey negotiates a daunting set of complex political, scientific, social, and cultural relationships with enough detail to sustain his points yet still have the narrative move along without too many distractions. . . . Sets a new standard for environmental historians by looking at the diplomatic interactions that tried—and failed—to conserve whale populations."
Carmel Finley
Journal of American History
"Dorsey’s prose is careful and meticulous, and facilitates a nuanced understanding of whaling politics . . . effectively narrat[ing] the history and background of whale diplomacy in a way that should appeal to environmental historians, environmental policy researchers, diplomacy scholars, students, and even active diplomats and policymakers who are concerned with the health of the ocean and global environmental problems."
Chie Sakakibara
Journal of Historical Geography
"Whales and Nations is a dazzling accomplishment."
Miles A. Powell
Environment and History